This new AI Mode feature is like Google Lens on steroids

Google supercharged Search with the new Gemini-powered AI Mode early last month, making it easy for users to find answers to complex, multi-part questions. The company is now leveling up the feature with visual search capabilities and expanding its availability to more users.

You can now use AI Mode in Search to ask questions about images, as Google has upgraded the feature with the powerful multimodal capabilities in Lens. The company announced this change in a recent blog post, highlighting that AI Mode can now “understand the entire scene in an image, including the context of how objects relate to one another and their unique materials, colors, shapes and arrangements.”

Thanks to this new visual search feature, you can now use AI Mode to ask complex questions about the image as a whole or the objects within the image. For example, you can use it to capture an image of books and then ask for similar recommendations. AI Mode will identify each book in the frame, issue multiple queries to learn about the books and deliver a list of recommended titles with links to help you learn more and make a purchase.

In addition to adding new visual search capabilities to AI Mode, Google is expanding the feature to more users. AI Mode initially debuted as a limited, opt-in feature for Google One AI Premium subscribers. The feature became available to some waitlisted users on the free tier late last month, and now Google is bringing to millions more Labs users in the US.